


the stone inside you still hasn't hit bottom

by andawaywego



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Brief Language, Brief Outlaw Queen, F/F, Fake Robin bein' shady, Snow and Regina being BFF's, mentions of Captain Swan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10354263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "Her breaking point comes in the form of Emma regaling the tale of how Henry had insisted on reading the entirety of the tent’s manual before trying to assemble it, because her eyes are so bright and she’s smiling and Regina can’t—She’s saying, “I love you, Emma,” before she can stop herself."Post-6x12 angst. SQ.





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you're reading "this dream going on" i'm almost done with it but it makes me sad!!
> 
> and i needed to decompress after last week and before this week.
> 
> takes place during/after that episode and then the month after (yikes).
> 
> super ignored how shady fake Robin is in favor of better things, too. but also hyper focused on Emma and Henry's random camping trip that was used to just get them out of the way for the giant romance between her bf and her dad. gross.
> 
> read on.

…

_the stone inside you still hasn’t hit bottom_

_.._

She’d realized it two years before she ever came to terms with it.

In a mist of swirling, putrid purple as she exhausted herself to be a hero, she realized that the only two people left for her to love were a good mile down the road already.

There was the sound of the town ripping away from existence, heavy in her ears, and then nothing.

She doesn’t come to terms with it until Emma tells her to bring Robin with her back to Storybrooke and something inside of her _snaps_.

And then it snaps again—harder—in the middle of the road just two seconds before Emma shatters that sword and relief floods Regina because Emma won’t be dying tonight.

.

And then that night—that first night that Robin spends in the second guest bedroom, with her digging out some of the real Robin’s clothes from the attic and leaving them in a neat pile at the door—Regina asks her son very quietly, when she goes in to say goodnight, for his book.

Henry stares at her for a quiet second and then gets out of his bed, slinks across the room in long-legged movements, and pulls it out of his sock drawer.

She doesn’t sleep. She reads.

Sitting in the chair by the window in Henry’s room—afraid to leave him with a stranger in the house, even if that stranger shares a face with her former soulmate—she reads the book cover to cover.

It surprises her around two in the morning, when Henry’s breathing briefly changes as he rolls over and tugs the blankets over his head, that she’d never really thought to do that before she’d wanted to find the Author.

She’s never read it for the mere act of reading a story.

The illustrations are more jarring than the stories for some reason, making her feel queasy and uncomfortable every time she’s met with an ink rendition of herself.

The thing that is particularly magnetizing about all of it is that each mention of Snow’s name, every time she reads the phrase Dark Curse, she becomes nostalgic for a time she’s certain never existed. She feels a deep, disconcerting longing for something she never had—a family or a love that never held her, even when her Robin had been real.

She wonders if he snores here, too.

When she wakes up, it’s morning and Emma is laughing somewhere downstairs with Henry and she can smell something cooking—not burning, for once, because Emma has been _learning_. The whole thing seems very lighthearted and the memory of Emma standing with that sword in the middle of the street makes her head feel foggy.

She’s let herself in with that spare key Regina gave her after she decided not to whisk their son away to New York again and she invades Regina’s life, always, as though she has no intention to leave anytime soon, though her actions and choices usually dictate otherwise.

The book is heavy on Regina’s lap.

And she is certain, with one last glance at a drawing of a small swaddled bundle in a young Charming’s arms, that she’s not the only one who doesn’t believe in happy endings.

.

Robin tries to kill Keith—or…The Sheriff.

It’s enough to make Regina pang with longing again—this time for that world she’d dragged him from. He should never have come with her.

She shouldn’t have let him.

And then he kisses her and—

Nothing. It’s the final nail in her coffin, not Robin’s.

She remembers, at once, kissing him in this world when he was truly him. And it had been warm and pleasant enough—even when she’d occasionally been thinking of someone else—but it had been nothing like this.

And maybe it’s her that’s changed in the months since Robin left her and it has nothing to do with this carbon copy at all.

Months without him reminded her of what it was like to have no one on her mind, really, but Emma and Henry and how much they’ve grown together.

Still, she tells Snow that it felt like kissing a photograph—a mere cut-out from the book that had consumed her son’s life for an entire life-changing year. She says that she wanted to be right or something very much like that, or maybe Snow does.

Her head is ringing with the image that had been brought unbidden to mind when Robin had pressed into her.

“Killian is talking about proposing,” is what Snow says sometime after a long silence and it’s like everything inside of Regina just _stops_.

It’s likely that Snow is trying to help—trying to change the subject—but there’s this look in her eyes and Regina has known her for too long to believe that she would never change subjects so suddenly if she weren’t trying to garner a reaction.

She tries to imagine Snow sitting down with Killian to discuss this sort of thing, or Charming clapping the man on the back or something to that effect—and, does Emma know?

“Oh,” is what Regina can get out and that’s good enough for a moment or two. “That’s…wonderful.”

Snow doesn’t seem to explicitly believe her beyond the sentiment, but she just pushes a mug of hot tea towards Regina and Regina takes it and sips it softly. She says, “Okay,” and Regina wants to cry, but she doesn’t.

She says, “Goodnight,” on her way out the door and it’s completely possible that Snow has no idea that Regina had been thinking of her daughter, of Emma—the way she used to swagger around town, those afternoons leaned against her desk before the pirate came to town—when Robin kissed her.

And not just most recently, but all the times before, too.

Emma in white with a basket of flowers.

Lying used to be easier, she thinks, when all she had to do was tell herself that Robin was her soulmate and _this_ was the way things were done. There was no end to her story without him.

 These days, lying has become harder than remembering to breathe.

.

Henry calls from where they’re camping that night and she can hear the sound of a fire crackling somewhere in the background.

Regina is curled up on her couch under a blanket that smells like him and she’s not thinking about the man she’s housing up in the second guest bedroom.

She’s not thinking about the first guest bedroom and Emma’s extra clothes and spare toothbrush occupying the dresser in there. She’s not thinking about Emma at all, actually—or trying not to, at least—until Henry says, “Emma says hi.”

And she smiles even though she tries not to, but that’s never mattered with Emma much anyway.

Then, “Hey, Regina!” in the background, followed by, “You should have come with us! Home is probably lame without me and Henry there!”

Emma doesn’t mean anything by it. She’s being friendly.

And they’d sort of settled into a Emma-stays-over-when-she-wants-a-change-of-scenery thing before she moved in with Hook and now the bottles of her shampoo Regina had stocked up on months prior—in the weeks before the _real_ Robin came back from New York—have gone untouched for something like months.

 _Home_ to her must mean anywhere with a soft enough bed.

But her real home is the one she shares with the pirate.

“Yeah, Mom,” Henry is saying when Regina is staring at her hands. “I wish you’d come, too.  Emma _accidentally_ set all the marshmallows on fire.”

And there’s a sound of a scuffle in the background—Emma giving him a noogie or something and Regina tries so often _not_ to think of Emma or Hook or _EmmaandHook_ , but it’s like she can’t help it anymore.

.

There must be a finite number of stupid things she can do in a certain amount of time, but this week alone seems devoted to testing the limit.

“I won’t be gone long,” is what she tells Robin when she pops in to check on him.

He laughs in this fake way that sounds nothing like the old him and she thinks of all those times when he’d been real, when she’d thought of Emma—of blonde hair and soft fingertips and that pretty scowl Emma gets on her face when she’s tired. How often she’d tried to push it to the back of her mind.

It’s been a long road of suppression and avoidance and one kiss that she’d wanted to bury it all under has made all those roadblocks fall to nothing at her feet. Months of longing and all that time when Henry had been with Emma in New York and those early days before the curse had even broken and— _God._

_Has she ever wanted anyone else?_

“I can handle myself for a few hours,” Robin tells her but she doesn’t trust him, really. Something in the way his tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth when he says it.

She watches him a moment and then, carefully, says, “Okay.”

But her mind is on Emma, on her son sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods, and some velvet ring box in Emma’s house, hidden away and she can’t think of anything else.

.

“Holy shit, Regina,” is the way she’s greeted. “I thought you were…a murderer or something.”

Emma is standing in the middle of the clearing right beside the fire she’s made, slightly out of breath and scared, standing guard as a lone sentry outside the tent that Henry is in. It occurs to Regina then—and only then—that she never should have let Emma traipse through the woods alone when Gold’s son is out to get her still.

That same realization dawns on Emma, too, who might have believed the cracking of twigs signaling the arrival of a third party, to be Gideon and not her son’s other mother.

“Sorry,” Regina says sheepishly.

She’s at a loss in Emma’s presence. Always is.

“Just don’t try to like…I don’t know…Kill me,” Emma says and it’s a joke that only barely twitches Regina’s lips up because she’s thinking about the middle of the road again. “Kidding,” Emma says, seeing the look on her face.

But, “Don’t,” Regina whispers. “He could have killed you.”

Emma’s face falls serious then, ridiculously so. And she says, “He didn’t,” like she believes it, adding, “He won’t,” when Regina can’t stop looking worried.

“Come here. It’s cold,” Emma says next, holding out a hand to guide Regina to a fold-out chair by the fire--as if she expects Regina to take it, but Regina can’t and doesn’t. She presses her own hands into the pockets of her coat and sits down stiffly.

“Why your first thought after a near-death experience was to take our son into the middle of the woods where I can’t protect him is beyond me,” Regina says as Emma tries to make another s’more for her to try.

Emma shrugs, and there’s maybe something deeper to her, “Eh.”

Something about wanting to take Henry away from anywhere she could easily be found.

Regina lets it slide.

Emma keeps her marshmallow in the fire too long and it gets thoroughly burnt. “They’re usually better than that,” Emma winces as Regina tries to eat the crisp thing, pressed between half a Hershey’s bar and some graham crackers.

It tastes like watered down chocolate-covered cardboard, but Emma looks so disappointed in herself that Regina swallows it and says, “It’s quite good.”

It’s the first time she’s helped a situation by lying in a long time.

Things are fine after that, for a while, until something starts to bubble under Regina’s skin every time Emma smiles at her—every time she gets a flash of how far they’ve come since that first meeting on her front lawn three years ago.

Every time she wishes she could go back and do things differently.

Her breaking point comes in the form of Emma regaling the tale of how Henry had insisted on reading the entirety of the tent’s manual before trying to assemble it, because her eyes are so bright and she’s smiling and Regina can’t—

She’s saying, “I love you, Emma,” before she can stop herself.

It’s the look on Emma’s face, and not the words themselves, that make Regina’s face boil bright red in horror.

Even the wind in the trees and the popping of the wood in the fire stops for the thirty seconds after she says it. Emma doesn’t appear to be breathing, just watching Regina’s face in the flickering light and Regina is certain that she’s forgotten how to breathe in the first place.

And she’s done so many things in her life.

She fell off Rocinante the first time she rode him and she kissed Daniel first, under the stars outside the stable one night, and she chased after Snow on horseback to save her.

She married a man she didn’t know and killed him and spent so many years _alone_ , with no one on her side until _Henry_ and then she nearly lost him, too.

So many times.

And those things were so scary and so hard and _this—_

This is _terrifying_.

She was that girl in the storybook, young and hopeful. She became that woman, too—scorned and cruel and, most of all, frightened.

But, right now, she is some pitiful combination of both as she waits for Emma to say or do _something_.

And then—it’s slow and infuriating and nothing, really, at all—Emma opens her mouth to say something, and the curve of her lips gives away the rejection she’s about to spit out.

“That’s okay,” Regina hears herself whisper and she gets to her feet. “Please tell Henry to call me in the morning.”

On her way out of the clearing, back into the woods to where she parked her car on the side of the road, she hears Emma say, “Regina, wait—” as if torn between leaving Henry unattended and chasing after her.

She makes the right choice.

Regina’s hands are shaking either from the cold or something else and it feels like losing Daniel and Robin and Henry all at once.

It’s one of the harder things she’s had to do when she drives away.

.

Robin moves into a room at Granny’s the next day.

“Is it something I’ve done?” he asks, looking so much like _her_ Robin that she can’t help but reach out and grab his arm, soft under her palms.

“No,” she tells him. “It was never about you.”

Regina still can’t bring herself to trust him, but it’s been a week and the most untrustworthy thing she’s caught him doing is smiling politely at her sister on the street one afternoon.

Henry seems relieved, but he doesn’t say that exactly. At breakfast each morning, he looks like he wants to ask her what happened, but she becomes good at bumping the conversation around too quickly for him to get the chance before he has to go to school.

Emma tries to call her exactly once.

She doesn’t leave a voicemail.

In Snow and Charming’s apartment one evening, with Charming asleep in the bedroom, Regina bobs Neal on her shoulder and listens to Snow carefully avoid anything to do with Emma or Robin.

“How are you?” is the closest Snow ever gets, but she accepts Regina’s, “I’m fine, dear,” every time.

Regina is fine.

In her life, she has loved exactly three people.

One of them died in her arms. One died before her arms could get to him and came back _wrong_.

Emma is no different.

And, really, after three years, it would seem that Regina has loved Emma the longest out of any of them.

Emma won’t die, of course. Shattering that sword was a great bargaining chip against her latest foe.

No, Emma will live a long, long time and maybe that’s what makes her different—

The fact that, if the chips fall right, Regina might end up loving her for the rest of her life.

.

Nothing happens for the longest time.

It’s the stillest the town has ever been after an unsuccessful attempt on the life of their Savior.

Regina wakes up every morning. She drops Henry off at school.

She sits at her desk until it’s time to pick him up, pretending to care about zoning laws and department budgets, and then she goes home with her son.

She eats dinner. She goes to bed.

Every day is the same.

Emma does not call again and Snow and Charming exist with her in some sort of purgatory just two steps shy of what is maybe supposed to be their happy ending.

Theirs eludes them with each kiss pressed to unresponsive lips.

Hers lives in a house with someone else.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Henry manages one night when they’re sitting on the couch.

She thinks, immediately, of Robin in a cold room she’d once shared with Graham across town and then of Emma, in her house with her soon-to-be fiancé.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks.

And Henry doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, even if she has a hundred.

.

Emma and Hook break up just a week or so later.

Snow tells Regina in her kitchen this time—leaning against the vast, sterile countertop with her son at her hip. It had been silent in the moments prior to this information, just Regina watching the kettle heat up on the stove and then—

There it is.

Regina doesn’t say anything for a long time.

And then Snow says, “Emma has been asking about you,” like it will change anything.

“Oh.”

Quiet again, and Snow is smart enough to change the subject, even if she’s not particularly good at it.

“It’s getting harder,” Snow says and she sounds distinctly like she’s about to start crying.

And Regina knows she means the curse her and Charming are dealing with—feels poignant secondhand guilt from the reminder—and she’s never been one for physical affection, but Snow’s shoulder is soft when she pats it and then makes it seem as if she were simply adjusting a wayward curl of hair on Neal’s head.

“We’ll figure it out,” Regina says because, of course they will. They always do.

And then Snow sniffles pathetically and says, “You will, too,” and Regina pretends she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

She reads the book again for the hundredth time in three weeks that night, and it’s not just for the mesmerizing act of it like all those times before.

She’s searching again, as she’d been for clues about the Author the year before, but, this time, even she’s not certain what it is she’s looking for.

.

“What’s going on?” Henry asks and it’s the middle of the night two weeks later.

Regina jolts awake on the couch, the crushing weight of his book on her chest, and her eyes haven’t adjusted yet, making the image of her bedraggled son standing in his pajama’s in the doorway a faint, sleepy blur.

“Henry?” she asks. Her head is pounding out images of Emma—in the station, in Granny’s, in her kitchen, in her car—as it has been for the past three weeks and she’s dizzy from it.

She presses her fingers into her temple to make it _stop_.

“I’ve tried to give you space, Mom,” Henry barrels on, still not making any sense. “I’ve let you tell me you’re fine, that nothing is going on, but…Emma’s been acting the same exact way and if something is going on with you two, don’t I have the right to know about it?”

His words spin in her head, and she swings her feet to the floor, pressing her cold heels into the rug to try and make everything feel more grounded.

“Emma’s been—” Her throat constricts around the other woman’s name. “What?”

She blinks rapidly to clear her eyes and she can see him perfectly when he crosses his arms.

“I’ve been really tolerant, I think. I let that… _guy_ stay here even when he was acting shady. I thought…You know, if that’s what you need to be happy, then good, Mom. Emma had Killian. You could have someone too.”

His words are an empty black hole in her chest. She opens her mouth to say something, but Henry just shakes his head to stop her.

“But now…I don’t…What’s going on?”

And he seems at such a genuine loss that Regina isn’t even sure what to tell him—Henry, her beautiful baby boy who wants nothing more than for her to be happy and safe, who just wants a happy, loving family and who has been through _so much more_ than any boy his age should.

“What’s going on, Mom?” And the end of the word _mom_ lifts up just the tiniest bit at the end, sounding incomplete. As if he’d nearly called her _mommy_ like he used to in days before he turned ten and that storybook— _this_ storybook—changed everything and everyone and brought them _Emma_ and—

He’s terrified, she thinks. Perhaps as terrified as she is.

Of everything.

The hooded figure; the idea of leaving; of losing their home; losing Emma—and Snow and Charming are _cursed_ right now.

They could lose Emma to a lot of things. A marriage to Killian. A sword to the stomach. Her yellow bug and penchant for running.

She wants to lie again. It’s always her first instinct. She wants to tell him that nothing is going on and that everything will be fine. Emma will marry the pirate and Charming and Snow will be awake at the same time and everyone will live happily ever after.

But he’s older now. Less believing.

And she can’t bear the idea of his forgiving, careful stillness and the pitfall of uncertainty and resentment making each of them heavier with each lie.

So, she tells him what she can and he listens with warmth beside her on the couch and his too-big hand swallow hers.

“What are you going to do?” he asks and she’s not certain, so she doesn’t say.

He doesn’t tell her that it makes sense or that he wants Emma to love her back just like she does. He doesn’t say anything like that, and that’s better, maybe. He wasn’t expecting it. Last week, Emma had been living with her boyfriend in a house he’d helped them pick out.

It’s a big adjustment.

“There’s nothing to be done,” she tells him, but that’s a lie and a blatant one.

One Henry sees right through.

“That’s not how good stories end,” he tells her, a bit of the Author in him peeking out even without his pen at hand.

“This isn’t a story, dear,” she says. “This is our lives. My life and Emma’s and I’ve never had a particular knack for holding onto the people I love. I’ve lost each of them. Except for you.”

“I love you, too, Mom,” he answers faithfully, just like he always does, even when that’s not at all the point. “But…This isn’t a good enough ending, even if this isn’t a story. This can’t be all there is.”

His large fingers play in her own, warm and a little clammy and _his_ , and then he says, “Operation Mongoose part two,” in this particularly light voice that makes her smile a little, despite herself.

But hope can be as toxic as it can be uplifting.

So, she sighs softly before anything else she says gives her away. “We’ll see, Henry,” is all she can manage in the silence.

She tucks him in that night like he’s ten again and remembers all those times she sat on his bed watching him sleep in nights past.

He lets her brush light fingers through his hair until he drifts off and the last thing she thinks before she gets up, turns off the lamp, and leaves is that all of this would make a lot more sense if Emma could just be at her side for things like this with nothing else standing between them.

.

She is lying in her bedroom an hour later and she can’t sleep. It’s dark and quiet and, as always, she’s trying not to think about Emma across town with her parents just as hard as she always tried to not think about Emma across town with Hook.

For the first time since that swirling vortex of darkness took Emma away for all those months, she lets herself imagine how Emma sounds at night—late. The low pitch of her voice in the shadows and it makes her chest ache so much she has to try to clear it from her mind.

She tells herself that she is strong enough to lose Emma completely.

She lost Daniel, then Robin. She can lose Emma, too, and she’s gone through it before. It will be easier this time—easier than it was in the first week after the darkness took her and left nothing but that dagger behind.

It will practically be the same. She’ll ache for Emma’s smile and her laugh. She’ll stand in the hot spray of the shower until it turns cold, remembering Emma’s desperate eyes trying to recognize and discern something in her own. And it will go away eventually—in Camelot, last time, because Emma had Hook and Emma said she was sorry when she learned about Daniel and Regina had gone numb.

She’ll learn faster this time.

Her phone rings on the nightstand, buzzing densely in the quiet of the room and making her jump.

The caller ID has a picture of Emma and Henry making ridiculous faces and it’s from more recently but Regina has never known how it came to be set for every time Emma calls.

There’s only a brief hesitation before she picks up.

“Hello?” she answers, her voice quiet.

There’s hesitation and then Emma says, “You answered,” as if she’s been calling and calling and getting no response when she only called that once.

Her voice is quiet, too, but it holds so little warmth and familiarity that Regina is certain that she’s not alone. Like she’s just someone who shares custody of Emma’s son and no one more. Snow might be in the room, or perhaps her father.

“Yeah, I did,” and Regina thinks she sounds a little awed at it too.

“Give me a second,” Emma says next and then there’s the sound of her moving—maybe the sound of a door closing too and then she says, “I wanted to talk to you.”

But she makes no move to say anything else on the subject.

Regina sighs, ignoring the dull ache in her chest. “Okay.”

And she imagines in the silence all the things she wants Emma to say. All the things _she_ wants to say.

That she’s sorry for springing something like that on her, but she’s so happy that she’s not getting married. That she’s exhausted from it, from loving Emma and she can’t do it anymore because she needs to rest or just…or just _be_ with her. She’s tired of running from this thing pulsing between them because they’ve been doing it for years.

Regina wants to tell Emma that she wants her to stay. Be with her. She wants Emma to stay and love her.

And maybe Emma wants to say that, too, but all she says is, “Uh, did Henry finish that Social Studies project he was working on?”

Another sigh. Regina thinks she may never stop aching. “Yeah,” she says, “He did.”

And Emma is lying. Her “superpower” works on everyone but herself.

“Oh, good.” And then she says, “Um…It’s late, I’ll let you go, okay?”

Regina barely manages to get out an, “Okay,” before the line clicks silent.

She lays there for a long time, thinking about it—imagining Emma’s body against her own, warm breath on the side of her face. She tries to imagine what it would sound like had Emma said she loves her too.

She tries to sleep.

.

The next morning, she wakes with Henry’s words from the night before in her head.

It’s been two and a half weeks since Emma broke up with Hook and moved in with her parents.

It’s been over a month since that night in the woods.

And she realizes over toast and coffee—and watching her son scamper out of her car and up the school steps like a child he hasn’t been for years now—that she has nothing left to prove.

To anyone.

She’s tired of the song and dance.

She needs to face it or move on.

Possibly both.

And she drives right to the police station and goes in.

.

It’s a short drive, a short walk, and it’s hardly eight-thirty in the morning, but Regina is exhausted by the time she gets inside.

Completely worn out.

Emma is sitting at her desk and she hasn’t really _had_ to be the sheriff in so long—too busy being the _Savior_ —but her badge is clipped at her belt. She looks up when Regina enters and, the thing is, she doesn’t even look surprised.

Regina is trying to think of what it is she should say, trying not to focus on the fact that _Emma broke up with Hook_ who was going to _propose to her_. Who she _lived with_. And it’s barely been a few weeks and she’d heard Emma tell him she _loved_ him—maybe still does.

It’s hard to forget something like that.

And she’s trying to focus on Henry and his belief that everything is a story when it’s not.

It’s _not_.

This is real life.

And sometimes the hero doesn’t get the girl.

She opens her mouth to say all of this, but she doesn’t even get the chance because Emma is on her feet in an instant saying, “I’m so sorry, Regina. I…I shouldn’t have let you walk away, I wanted to—”

But, Regina doesn’t understand what she could be sorry for.

She should be sorry.

Sorry for loving her like this. Sorry for making it about that and nothing else when there’s _Henry_ and _Robin_ and…

And _Hook_ to consider.

Sorry for fucking the whole thing up and falling in love with _Snow White’s_ daughter.

Emma is continuing on, so stubborn like her son and she’s not making eye contact, she’s just sort of shoving her fists in her pocket and kicking at the floor when she says, “I didn’t know what to say because, like…I don’t know, I’ve loved you for so long, and I just—”

Regina’s heart lurches and she starts trembling, as if she’s coming apart at Emma’s admission.

“But…We’ve been…I had _Killian_ to consider and you had _Robin_ and all this… _shit_ and it’s never easy, huh?” She lets out a small laugh that doesn’t convince anyone. “We’ve wasted so much time and I, _God_ , this would have been easier if nobody’d had to get hurt, but—”

Her feet move her forward before she can even really figure out what she’s doing, and she gently puts shaking fingers underneath Emma’s chin, tipping it up.

Then Regina kisses her.

It’s different than kissing Robin—than kissing the idea of a person—or the King or even Daniel, as long ago as it has been now. It’s different in a way she can’t describe and Emma kisses her back with more feeling than Regina has the strength to muster.

“Never apologize to me,” Regina says, and means it.

And maybe there’s something to Henry thinking of everything as a story.

Because (fake) Robin is still across town in a room at Granny’s and either Snow or Charming is awake right now, but not both. Hook is somewhere else entirely and Henry is sitting in class and Gideon could come back any moment with a twist of Fate they won’t be able to outrun, but nothing else exists beyond whatever page they’re currently on.

She imagines a blurry watercolor of herself gripping the edges of Emma’s red leather jacket, Emma tilting her head with shaky hands on Regina’s waist to get a better angle.

It would be nowhere near the _And They Lived Happily Ever After_ in big letters at the end of the book and somehow it wouldn’t matter anyway.

…

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from Richard Siken's "Seaside Improvisation"
> 
> give me your thoughts, love, or hate here or i'm housewithoutwindows on tumblr. i don't discriminate.


End file.
